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German politicians expressed alarm on Monday over anti-lockdown protests held in major cities at the weekend, warning conspiracy theorists and others with an agenda were exploiting frustration with measures to contain the pandemic.

During the rallies tens of thousands of ordinary Germans joined with conspiracy theorists to protest coronavirus restrictions.

They held up posters of billionaire Bill Gates, Merkel and her peripatetic medical adviser, Christian Drosten – who have all advocated lockdown measure to contain the pandemic.

Among the most publicised conspiracy theories in Germany has linked the coronavirus to a government trick to plant mind control chips into Germans.

A man shouts at a policeman during a protest rally against coronavirus restrictions in Berlin, Germany (Image: Getty Images)

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While protests held in Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart were relatively modest in size, several resulted in violent clashes with police as densely packed crowds violated social distancing requirements designed to prevent the virus from spreading.

The protests were mounted in part by proponents of conspiracy theories blaming everyone from vaccine makers to billionaire software tycoon and philanthropist Bill Gates for the disease.

There is, of course, no evidence for these conspiracy theories whatsoever.

"Germany has a free media landscape that informs about all aspects of the pandemic," government spokesman Steffen Seibert said. "Abstruse claims and hate-filled assertions, theories about evils machinating globally are something quite different."

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Germany has been successful in using social distancing to reduce transmissions of the virus.

But the reproduction rate highlights the dilemma facing authorities as they chart a slow reopening of the economy and social life.

"The idea that the pandemic was deliberately introduced to control the people, and that Bill Gates or other dark forces are behind it, reaches deep into the middle of society," Georg Maier, interior minister of the Thuringia region, told Der Spiegel magazine.

An employee of the Federal Interior Ministry was relieved of his duties at the weekend after writing and widely distributing an 80-page document on ministry notepaper in which he described the coronavirus as no worse than normal flu.

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The ministry described the paper as the civil servant's personal view.

Large gatherings such as the weekend protests risk becoming infection hot spots even as German authorities rush to prepare expanded medical facilities to deal with the possibility of new outbreaks or a broader second wave.

Berlin announced on Monday that an ad hoc hospital for coronavirus patients on the grounds of the capital's trade fair space had opened after four weeks of construction.

One of 50 such facilities being built around the country, it is designed to receive overflow patients in the event of a serious outbreak, leaving established hospital beds free for the most serious cases.